The Jewish Telegraphic Agency's new Washington blog is called "Capital J". "Inside the Beltway with Ron Kampeas & Eric Fingerhut." I wonder if they would have come up with that name if not for J Street. I bet not. That blog entry is about Congressman Steve Israel, who represents Long Island, NY, calling for an investigation of Chas Freeman's connections to the Arab world. We don't want any "bias" in our Mideast policy, sayeth Israel. Oh my.
I'd called Freeman an Arabist, because of his connections with Saudi Arabia. Jeff Blankfort writes:
Freeman obviously represents the realists within the Pentagon
and what is left of the old guard in the Foreign Service. It is a
mistake to call men like him "Arabists," which implies that their
critical position regarding US support for Israel
is based on a pro-Arab bias as opposed to what they think is in the
best interests of the US. To use the reverse of the term which might be
more apropos, it would be like calling all of those politicians who
kow-tow to the lobby, "Jewists." Speaking quite objectively, it is
clear that whatever one thinks of the Saudis,
and my opinion of them is no higher than yours, there is no question
but that the US-Saudi Arabia relationship is far more important in
terms of US interests than is our relationship with Israel. In fact, it
is so important both in terms of its role in supplying the world's oil
companies with oil and its massive purchases of US weaponry (that it
will never use but) that keep our arms factories in business, that
efforts by the neocons and other "Israelists" to break up that
relationship have gone nowhere.
And Jack Ross weighs in:
Israel isn't the only one being shamelessly unironic about Charles Freeman. The Commentary blog is using all manner of similar rhetoric about
Freeman, the paid agent of a foreign power.
This is absurd on a number of levels. I thought the Saudis were supposed to be our friends against the big bad Iranians, now that it's inconvenient they're the Wahabi fundamentalists again?
